Online services, such as social networking sites, news sites, etc., allow users to interact with each other online. For example, users can post public messages, comments, articles, songs, etc., that are visible by other users of the online service. Users may also add reply comments to existing posts to create an online dialogue with other users. In addition to these public conversations, many sites allow for private direct messaging between users. To encourage users to engage in online conversations, status indicators may be presented that indicate whether the other users are currently logged into the online service and available to converse. For example, a status indicator may be presented next to a name of the user and/or a user interface element that allows a user to engage in a conversation with the other user. This allows a user to quickly determine whether another user is currently using the online service and thus available to converse, One issue with providing these types of status indicators is scalability. With the high number of users using online services, providing status indicators for each of them is resource intensive. For example, to determine the status of a user, a device transmits a request to a server. This process is repeated periodically to obtain updated status information for each user, thereby further increasing the number of requests transmitted to the server. Sending these requests for each user is unsustainable when dealing with a high number of users. Accordingly, improvements are needed.